If you understand everything,’ I said carefully, ‘then there’s no room left for magic. It’s only when you’re lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that’s why they like us to live in chaos.
BERNARD CORNWELLWe make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.
More Bernard Cornwell Quotes
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We discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.
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Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.
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Book tours and research provide a lot of travel – too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
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I’m fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.
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You won’t regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.
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What I mean by that is that the point of life, as I see it, is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans, but to achieve happiness, and preferably an unselfish happiness.
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But when you have order, you don’t need Gods. When everything is well ordered and disciplined then nothing is unexpected.
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A man does not see where he treads in battle, for he is watching the enemy.
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Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation… Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
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We don’t build,’ I said to my son, ‘we just destroy.
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Television is a young person’s medium.
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Writing is a solitary occupation.
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We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.
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Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.
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Because there could not be peace, not while two tribes shared one land. One tribe must win.
BERNARD CORNWELL